Here's a two-parter, so pour yourself a cup of joe (or crack open a poptop, depending on your time zone).

I apologize in advance for the relatively low-rez images. These articles were particularly difficult to scan, because these issues of the magazine were bound together in a thick cloth binding (about 6 months' worth of magazines). This led to two problems. One: the depth of field from the scanner's viewpoint was skewed due to the offset distance from the scanning lens. And, two: the spines of the magazines were deeply sewn into the cloth binding, so the inner margins of many of the pages were not able to be clearly visible. I tried photoshopping some, but it didn't help much.
Still, I think with some good reading glasses, some patience, and some interpolation based on context, >95% of the article will be comprehensible.
<Edit>: See crock's post below for a link to the online text.

The scans are fantastic! I like how they show what Sports meant at the time, which can be seen in the table of contents, the drawings, and the ads. It was an era when people actually participated in sports and not just tailgating and fantasy leagues, before celebrity sports heroes and millionaire college coaches.

somewhat mystified by the decisions the guides made that led them into this awful situation

I think you mean the "trip leaders", i.e. Ellis Blade. He was not a professional guide. Definitely his decisions that created the disaster, and he didn't have a realistic view of the capabilities of the people in his group.

I think people were much more likely to follow authority back in the '60s. Or, to be more precise, much less likely to challenge it

Not really. But I don't remember the psychological complexities of that particular group - they may have been less willing to think for themselves than , say, climbers from California at the time. I was there earlier that summer, but only heard about this catastrophe from Pete Sinclair later.

In an attempt to encourage further input, let me address the two comments made above.

Clint writes:

I think you mean the "trip leaders", i.e. Ellis Blade. He was not a professional guide.

Now Pete Sinclair, in We Aspired, writes:

The leader of the party, Ellis Blade, was himself not an Appie but a hired expedition leader.

In Not a Place for People, he and Al Simpson write:

The leader of the party was Ellis Blade, not himself an Appie but a recognised leader. Blade was not really what Europeans would regard as a guide. Americans do not hire guides in America, they hire authorities.

To tie this in with jogill's remarks:
There have always been rebels and conformists, and certainly a party that would look for structure and actually hire someone to lead them up a mountain would be more likely to conform to authority than, say, the Camp 4 crowd. And hiring and agreeing to follow someone can also make a group more compliant.

I think the unwillingness of anyone to challenge Blade was an important part of the crisis - and when he was finally confronted, he did back down.

Blade had experience in the Tetons. It looks like he spent the summer of '54 there with Bill Cropper, earning mention in The Climber's Guide to the Teton Range, (pp. 308 and 305 in the Third Edition) for routes on Symmetry Spire.

Of course there can be no real resolution of this question now, especially without Ellis Blade himself, but perhaps his fear of the very tangible danger of descending is what blinded him to the absurdity of his decision to continue up.

This is really getting a bit into minituae here, but I may be able to contribute a little to the discussion. I came into climbing only a few years after this incident. In fact I have a clear memory of hanging around at the Jenny Lake Ranger Station as a relatively novice climber when Pete Sinclair (then chief climbing ranger and a very charismatic guy) came rushing into the ranger station holding a copy of Sports Illustrated saying, "the second installment is out---and (facetously)it's all about me!!!". That was how I came to read the articles and first learned of the accident/rescue.

However as a climber mostly active in the midwest (Devil's Lake) and the Gunks at the time I was well aware (and became even better informed later) of the highly structured, almost militaristic, approach to climbing followed by many climbing organizations from the end of World War 2 through to the early '60s. While this approach was national in scope---I know that some on here have previously described incidents with some of the Sierra Club rock-climbing sections during this era, for example, it was particularly noticeable in the midwest and northeast. For anyone interested in this I really recommend Yankee Rock and Ice by Guy and Laura Waterman for their description of the "Conservative Tradition" in climbing during that era.

A key component of that tradition was the exalted role the "The Leader" and the almost invariably highly complex (yet very subjective)way that only a very few climbers in such organizations achieved such "status". In the AMC of that era the ultimate accomplishment was to be titled "Unrestricted Leader". Though I never met Ellis Blade I did know, though only slightly, Lester Germer who was a member of the party involved in the accident. My understanding was that Blade was such an "Unrestricted Leader" and by Club policy, tradition, and the prior experiences of the members of the party his word was to be followed without being questioned.It was also my understanding that he had led prior AMC climbs in such a capacity.Another major contributory factor in the accident, which also was a direct result of the limited number of individuals who made it through the process to become leaders, was the extremely large size of the party which attempted the climb. A large number of particpants on a major club outing with only a few "qualified" leaders resulted in too many people for a climb of that nature (or any technical climb in my opinion). Again, while the AMC was the organization involved in that particular epic, it could well have happened to parties from most of the nation's organized climbing groups of the day--from college outing clubs to national organizations.

This approach was already "under attack" and crumbling even by the time of the Grand incident--most notoriously through the actions (and the very existence) of the Vulgarians in the Gunks, but more quietly but just as effectively in many other areas across the country. The shear increase in the number of people who came into climbing in the '60s, as well as the attitudes of that time, quickly overwhelmed the highly structured approach in most areas of the country.Interestingly the AMC's initial response was the creation of a Safety Committee that tried to impose even more rules and structure, but that effort was doomed to falure.

Fascinating read. I hadn't heard the story before. Appropriate that it have it's own thread with the original art and advertising. Those rescuers get the badd-ass award of the 20th century.

Lots of interesting turns. The bizarre hubris of Blade. It's obvious that people were deferring to Charles early on (co-leader Smith asks Charles to intervene and stop the expedition rather than confront Blade himself) . The unwillingness of the experienced members of the group to challenge the authority figure. The insanely dangerous rescue. The delusional kid trying to kill everyone on the way down. Smith's odd detachment and death was.. a bit strange and sudden.. suspicious even (in my mind). Good stuff. When's the movie coming out ;)?

I'm suprised more tragedies haven't taken place on the Otter Body Route. The easy guidebook rating might invite climbing but the summit register pages from the past show few ascents (I saw very few signs of passage when I climbed it)

Easy in ideal conditions, I can understand rain,snow and ice turning it into a deadly netherworld. Rockfall coming down from the rotten gully west of Second Tower can be frightening even in dry conditions.

My father told me Stephen Smith's body was interred under the upper lip of the Otter Body snowfield...but twenty or thirty years later was recovered and sent home to family.